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Memories Post
All of Omar's memories, however big or small, have this in common: they all seem just a little larger than life, the colors brighter, the people a little smaller than it seems like they should really be, the perspective subtly but distinctly altered to convey that you are, in fact, at the very center of the world. Enjoy that.
((Note: CWs within for drug dealing, murder, gore, references to torture, burns, and self-harm.))
Youngin'
It's the middle of the night, and no one is anywhere in sight except your big brother, his much bigger friend, and the man the three of you are holding at gunpoint. You've never held a gun on anyone before, but that part doesn't bother you now; you've been shooting at things for ages, and it feels natural in your hand.
What does bother you is the look on the man's face as he digs into his pocket, pulls out a few crumpled bills, and tosses them to the ground. It doesn't look like anything at all. It's bus fare and a hot meal for a man coming home from the late shift.
What did we do that for? you think, even as your brother Anthony picks up the money and you all start running for safety. Why him?
Anthony counts it up when you get to the nearest alley. "Sixteen," he announces. You couldn't feel less proud if you tried.
"We took sixteen dollars from that man on his way home from work," you say, disgusted.
"Sixteen more than we had, motherfucker," Leon tells you. He's sixteen or seventeen and he's got at least a foot and a half on you, and he clearly thinks those things make you scared of him, but they don't at all. You shake your head and turn to your big brother.
"Anthony, give it back."
"Say what?" Leon says, like there's still some kind of argument about it, but you know a way to fix that: you take your pistol back out and make Leon the second man you've ever aimed a gun at.
Funny how he suddenly doesn't seem to have anything else to say.
---
Bodymore, Murdaland (CW: drug dealing, implied violence)
They say that summer in Baltimore is one of the most dangerous places and times in the world. You expect that's true. All you're doing right now is hanging out in your van, parked at the edge of an alley, watching the street -- but not far in the distance, you hear the intermittent pops of gunfire. It doesn't bother you, but you cock your head, listening. "Calverton?" you guess.
"Further than that," Bailey's deep voice says from the backseat. "Ashton, maybe."
Not particularly relevant, then; you've got the turf lines drawn up in your head like a map, and Ashton Street's not territory you're interested in. Today. You settle back and return your attention to what's in front of you. It's quiet here. The bodega on the corner has graffiti'd walls and windows two inches thick and fully covered by magazine racks, probably so there's no chance the owner inside can see anything outside.
Your real interest is on the handful of young black men standing around on the corner, mostly standing separately, sometimes drifting together for brief snatches of conversation. Most of the time, they're not talking to each other, but to whoever will listen, shouting in snippets of code: Red tops here, got them red tops! or five-o! People approach them, surreptitiously exchange money for goods, and slip away again. This is all normal. You're not expecting anything different today. This is what happens every hour of every day. All you're doing is scouting.
In the distance, the sirens scream towards Ashton Street.
---
Omar Coming (CW: drug dealing, implied violence)
You're on the move, striding down the middle of the street as if you own it. It's a steady line of old rowhouses, some boarded up, some abandoned, some occupied when they should be abandoned. Men sit on the stoops in jeans and white t-shirts, dealing, or drinking, or just smoking and chatting, but not for long. The one closest to you turns and spots you, and his dark skin turns ashy grey.
"Oh, shit--" He turns and bolts, yelling over his shoulder, "Omar coming, yo!"
You hear the cry carry down the street, picked up by one man and shouted to the next as each one tries to vanish. You're not after any of them, but it's nice to be appreciated, you think.
Then you spot the man you are looking for, the one still stupidly holding the bag, up ahead. You smile, unshoulder your shotgun, and start to whistle. The cheese stands alone, the cheese stands alone...
---
Houseguest (CW: drugs, drug dealing)
This, too, is a quiet memory. Peaceful, from your perspective. You're leaning against an open window on a warm fall day, looking out over the cracked, weedy sidewalks and painted rowhouses of this neighborhood.
There's a baby in your arms, the color of and barely bigger than a peanut. This is half your rent: your friend Shirleen lets you stay with her when you need to lay low sometimes as long as you babysit, which is easy with a docile little thing like this. In the street below, Jamal, one of the skinny corner boys you sometimes sell through, gives her the other half: three vials from your latest haul. She slips them into her pocket and walks one way; he turns and saunters off another.
You stroke baby Devon's fuzzy hair, losing interest in the now-empty street. "You hungry, little man?" you murmur, turning away to find the formula in Shirleen's sparse, age-yellowed kitchen.
---
Snitch (CW: torture, gore, murder)
You're sitting in a dark, brick-walled room, a crappy basement office. This is where the Baltimore police have put this task force or whatever it is, or so they tell you. The white dude, McNulty, sits on the table across from you; the black girl, you think Greggs, sits closer. The metal chair digs into your back. It's uncomfortably warm. What little sunlight there is is shining right into your eyes.
None of it matters. You're numb to everything but the profound, depthless grief inside you, second only to the rage. You sit quietly and you listen to them talk about how your "friend" was killed -- literally how, like you didn't already see the broken bones and cigarette burns and what they did to his face -- and how he died for your sake, in your name, protecting you.
Then they start in on the pitch. Don't kill Avon. Don't kill any of them. Or if you do, help us put some of them away, first. You could do more. You could help.
You can't listen to another word. "Let me tell y'all somethin', all right?" you cut in. "What I do, I do. Straight like that." Let them stop trying to sell you on this. Make them stop. You don't need convincing, especially not like this. "So ain’t no sense in y'all even troubling yourselves over that, ‘cause man, the way I feel right now, today--" You break off, your throat tight, your eyes stinging as you look at McNulty and Greggs and see only the boy you loved, more than anything, lying cold on the table in the morgue.
They watch. They wait, quiet. No more sales pitch. You take a deep breath and rub your forehead, collecting yourself. "What y'all need from me?" you ask, ready do to your part. You've never been a snitch before, but nothing is below you if it means ruining Avon Barksdale now.
---
Self-Flagellation (CW: burns, gore, self-harm)
This is another kind of grief, a different kind of grief, but no less powerful for that. You're alone in your room, and you have been since you got home. You're alone, chain-smoking, staring into nothing, and all you see is Tosha toppling to the ground, bleeding from the bullet in her head. Over and over and over, that's all you see. Sometimes, when you play it back in your head, you think you can tell that it's Dante's bullet hitting her -- friendly fire. Sometimes, you're sure it's a Barksdale bullet.
It's your fault either way. It's your fault in a way Brandon never was, because it had been his choice to go off on his own the night he died, but you're the one that made the call to fight today, even when Tosha told you it was a bad idea.
You pushed her right into her grave. You did.
The guilt rears up and seizes you, rips into you with a full set of claws and teeth, and you're glad you had the foresight to make the others stay downstairs, because you feel like you might be about to cry. You don't even deserve to cry, you tell yourself. You deserve to hurt.
It's easy to find the tool of your own punishment: it's right there in your hand. You take a few quick drags of the cigarette, until it's glowing hot, and then you push the end right down into your palm and close your fist around it. The pain is agonizing, blinding, deafening -- but it helps. When it starts to ebb again, you feel just a little bit cleaner.
---
Finish It (CW: gun violence/murder, reference to torture)
This memory could be right out of a John Woo movie. You're walking through the bones of an old building that's either in the process of being demolished or renovated, the walls and floors stripped bare; light streams in through the huge, empty windows. You even see birds silhouetted against them, taking flight as you near your quarry.
The man in front of you is big, even by your standards, but he looks smaller in his fear right now. He shifts his focus nervously between you, with your shotgun aimed at his gut, and your temporary ally on the stairs above, utterly placid in his suit and bow tie, pointing a pistol at his head.
"I ain't strapped," Stringer Bell croaks. You both keep moving towards him. "Look, man, I ain't involved," he tries instead. "I ain't involved in that gangster bullshit no more." That's a lie, but you don't really care. Mouzone doesn't care. This is for sins past. You stop, readying your shotgun. He sees the look on your face and starts sweating, breathing harder.
"What y'all want, man? Money?" No. "Is that it!?" he shouts, desperate for a moment, then reining himself back in. "'Cause if it is, man, I can be a better friend to y'all alive."
Enough. "You still don't get it, do you? This ain't about your money, bro," you snarl. "Your boy gave you up." Now it's starting to dawn on him. "That's right." You raise the gun, baring your teeth. "And we ain't had to torture his ass, neither!"
Now he gets why he's about to die. You for your reasons, and Mouzone for his, but all things Stringer Bell has brought on himself. He breathes in deep, his voice going thick. "Well, it seem like I can't say nothing to change y'all minds," he says softly. You wait and see if he's going to try to go out shooting, but all he does is stand there. Finally, he snaps: "Well, get on with it, motherf--"
Mouzone shoots. You shoot. You don't count the bullets -- maybe six -- but it's enough to make the towering giant that is Stringer Bell fall.
---
Crossbow (CW: murder)
You're on the deck of the Barge, and you're lounging in a deck chair while you wait, very patiently, for your quarry to show. You've warned him again and again, and shooting him didn't seem to work; all that happened was that the wardens took your guns away. Now he's killed his third innocent, and you think it's time for another lesson.
You're really very proud of this one.
Soon enough, you hear a jaunty whistle, and you look up just in time to see Ladd Russo sauntering towards you with a grin. It rankles that he's using your thing, the whistling, but that makes what happens next even easier. "Evening, killer," you drawl, quietly unzipping the duffel bag at your side. "You look like you out of appointments today."
Ladd's grin widens dangerously. "Maybe I am! Lookin' to fill up though, got a few open slots. A full one too, but unfortunately I've been forced to take a raincheck on that one." He leans in. "Whatcha got in that bag there? Anything interesting?"
You've got to give him this: the man knows how to give you a set-up, even when he doesn't know he's doing it. "My appointment book," you quip, as you haul out the handmade plastic crossbow and fire its single bolt right into Ladd Russo's throat.
((Note: CWs within for drug dealing, murder, gore, references to torture, burns, and self-harm.))
Youngin'
It's the middle of the night, and no one is anywhere in sight except your big brother, his much bigger friend, and the man the three of you are holding at gunpoint. You've never held a gun on anyone before, but that part doesn't bother you now; you've been shooting at things for ages, and it feels natural in your hand.
What does bother you is the look on the man's face as he digs into his pocket, pulls out a few crumpled bills, and tosses them to the ground. It doesn't look like anything at all. It's bus fare and a hot meal for a man coming home from the late shift.
What did we do that for? you think, even as your brother Anthony picks up the money and you all start running for safety. Why him?
Anthony counts it up when you get to the nearest alley. "Sixteen," he announces. You couldn't feel less proud if you tried.
"We took sixteen dollars from that man on his way home from work," you say, disgusted.
"Sixteen more than we had, motherfucker," Leon tells you. He's sixteen or seventeen and he's got at least a foot and a half on you, and he clearly thinks those things make you scared of him, but they don't at all. You shake your head and turn to your big brother.
"Anthony, give it back."
"Say what?" Leon says, like there's still some kind of argument about it, but you know a way to fix that: you take your pistol back out and make Leon the second man you've ever aimed a gun at.
Funny how he suddenly doesn't seem to have anything else to say.
---
Bodymore, Murdaland (CW: drug dealing, implied violence)
They say that summer in Baltimore is one of the most dangerous places and times in the world. You expect that's true. All you're doing right now is hanging out in your van, parked at the edge of an alley, watching the street -- but not far in the distance, you hear the intermittent pops of gunfire. It doesn't bother you, but you cock your head, listening. "Calverton?" you guess.
"Further than that," Bailey's deep voice says from the backseat. "Ashton, maybe."
Not particularly relevant, then; you've got the turf lines drawn up in your head like a map, and Ashton Street's not territory you're interested in. Today. You settle back and return your attention to what's in front of you. It's quiet here. The bodega on the corner has graffiti'd walls and windows two inches thick and fully covered by magazine racks, probably so there's no chance the owner inside can see anything outside.
Your real interest is on the handful of young black men standing around on the corner, mostly standing separately, sometimes drifting together for brief snatches of conversation. Most of the time, they're not talking to each other, but to whoever will listen, shouting in snippets of code: Red tops here, got them red tops! or five-o! People approach them, surreptitiously exchange money for goods, and slip away again. This is all normal. You're not expecting anything different today. This is what happens every hour of every day. All you're doing is scouting.
In the distance, the sirens scream towards Ashton Street.
---
Omar Coming (CW: drug dealing, implied violence)
You're on the move, striding down the middle of the street as if you own it. It's a steady line of old rowhouses, some boarded up, some abandoned, some occupied when they should be abandoned. Men sit on the stoops in jeans and white t-shirts, dealing, or drinking, or just smoking and chatting, but not for long. The one closest to you turns and spots you, and his dark skin turns ashy grey.
"Oh, shit--" He turns and bolts, yelling over his shoulder, "Omar coming, yo!"
You hear the cry carry down the street, picked up by one man and shouted to the next as each one tries to vanish. You're not after any of them, but it's nice to be appreciated, you think.
Then you spot the man you are looking for, the one still stupidly holding the bag, up ahead. You smile, unshoulder your shotgun, and start to whistle. The cheese stands alone, the cheese stands alone...
---
Houseguest (CW: drugs, drug dealing)
This, too, is a quiet memory. Peaceful, from your perspective. You're leaning against an open window on a warm fall day, looking out over the cracked, weedy sidewalks and painted rowhouses of this neighborhood.
There's a baby in your arms, the color of and barely bigger than a peanut. This is half your rent: your friend Shirleen lets you stay with her when you need to lay low sometimes as long as you babysit, which is easy with a docile little thing like this. In the street below, Jamal, one of the skinny corner boys you sometimes sell through, gives her the other half: three vials from your latest haul. She slips them into her pocket and walks one way; he turns and saunters off another.
You stroke baby Devon's fuzzy hair, losing interest in the now-empty street. "You hungry, little man?" you murmur, turning away to find the formula in Shirleen's sparse, age-yellowed kitchen.
---
Snitch (CW: torture, gore, murder)
You're sitting in a dark, brick-walled room, a crappy basement office. This is where the Baltimore police have put this task force or whatever it is, or so they tell you. The white dude, McNulty, sits on the table across from you; the black girl, you think Greggs, sits closer. The metal chair digs into your back. It's uncomfortably warm. What little sunlight there is is shining right into your eyes.
None of it matters. You're numb to everything but the profound, depthless grief inside you, second only to the rage. You sit quietly and you listen to them talk about how your "friend" was killed -- literally how, like you didn't already see the broken bones and cigarette burns and what they did to his face -- and how he died for your sake, in your name, protecting you.
Then they start in on the pitch. Don't kill Avon. Don't kill any of them. Or if you do, help us put some of them away, first. You could do more. You could help.
You can't listen to another word. "Let me tell y'all somethin', all right?" you cut in. "What I do, I do. Straight like that." Let them stop trying to sell you on this. Make them stop. You don't need convincing, especially not like this. "So ain’t no sense in y'all even troubling yourselves over that, ‘cause man, the way I feel right now, today--" You break off, your throat tight, your eyes stinging as you look at McNulty and Greggs and see only the boy you loved, more than anything, lying cold on the table in the morgue.
They watch. They wait, quiet. No more sales pitch. You take a deep breath and rub your forehead, collecting yourself. "What y'all need from me?" you ask, ready do to your part. You've never been a snitch before, but nothing is below you if it means ruining Avon Barksdale now.
---
Self-Flagellation (CW: burns, gore, self-harm)
This is another kind of grief, a different kind of grief, but no less powerful for that. You're alone in your room, and you have been since you got home. You're alone, chain-smoking, staring into nothing, and all you see is Tosha toppling to the ground, bleeding from the bullet in her head. Over and over and over, that's all you see. Sometimes, when you play it back in your head, you think you can tell that it's Dante's bullet hitting her -- friendly fire. Sometimes, you're sure it's a Barksdale bullet.
It's your fault either way. It's your fault in a way Brandon never was, because it had been his choice to go off on his own the night he died, but you're the one that made the call to fight today, even when Tosha told you it was a bad idea.
You pushed her right into her grave. You did.
The guilt rears up and seizes you, rips into you with a full set of claws and teeth, and you're glad you had the foresight to make the others stay downstairs, because you feel like you might be about to cry. You don't even deserve to cry, you tell yourself. You deserve to hurt.
It's easy to find the tool of your own punishment: it's right there in your hand. You take a few quick drags of the cigarette, until it's glowing hot, and then you push the end right down into your palm and close your fist around it. The pain is agonizing, blinding, deafening -- but it helps. When it starts to ebb again, you feel just a little bit cleaner.
---
Finish It (CW: gun violence/murder, reference to torture)
This memory could be right out of a John Woo movie. You're walking through the bones of an old building that's either in the process of being demolished or renovated, the walls and floors stripped bare; light streams in through the huge, empty windows. You even see birds silhouetted against them, taking flight as you near your quarry.
The man in front of you is big, even by your standards, but he looks smaller in his fear right now. He shifts his focus nervously between you, with your shotgun aimed at his gut, and your temporary ally on the stairs above, utterly placid in his suit and bow tie, pointing a pistol at his head.
"I ain't strapped," Stringer Bell croaks. You both keep moving towards him. "Look, man, I ain't involved," he tries instead. "I ain't involved in that gangster bullshit no more." That's a lie, but you don't really care. Mouzone doesn't care. This is for sins past. You stop, readying your shotgun. He sees the look on your face and starts sweating, breathing harder.
"What y'all want, man? Money?" No. "Is that it!?" he shouts, desperate for a moment, then reining himself back in. "'Cause if it is, man, I can be a better friend to y'all alive."
Enough. "You still don't get it, do you? This ain't about your money, bro," you snarl. "Your boy gave you up." Now it's starting to dawn on him. "That's right." You raise the gun, baring your teeth. "And we ain't had to torture his ass, neither!"
Now he gets why he's about to die. You for your reasons, and Mouzone for his, but all things Stringer Bell has brought on himself. He breathes in deep, his voice going thick. "Well, it seem like I can't say nothing to change y'all minds," he says softly. You wait and see if he's going to try to go out shooting, but all he does is stand there. Finally, he snaps: "Well, get on with it, motherf--"
Mouzone shoots. You shoot. You don't count the bullets -- maybe six -- but it's enough to make the towering giant that is Stringer Bell fall.
---
Crossbow (CW: murder)
You're on the deck of the Barge, and you're lounging in a deck chair while you wait, very patiently, for your quarry to show. You've warned him again and again, and shooting him didn't seem to work; all that happened was that the wardens took your guns away. Now he's killed his third innocent, and you think it's time for another lesson.
You're really very proud of this one.
Soon enough, you hear a jaunty whistle, and you look up just in time to see Ladd Russo sauntering towards you with a grin. It rankles that he's using your thing, the whistling, but that makes what happens next even easier. "Evening, killer," you drawl, quietly unzipping the duffel bag at your side. "You look like you out of appointments today."
Ladd's grin widens dangerously. "Maybe I am! Lookin' to fill up though, got a few open slots. A full one too, but unfortunately I've been forced to take a raincheck on that one." He leans in. "Whatcha got in that bag there? Anything interesting?"
You've got to give him this: the man knows how to give you a set-up, even when he doesn't know he's doing it. "My appointment book," you quip, as you haul out the handmade plastic crossbow and fire its single bolt right into Ladd Russo's throat.